Steam 2011 Holiday Sale is here!!

What did you guys get from the gift? Anyone get one of these "golden coupons" that can be used during the sale?
 
Ugh seriously. The last time I actually got the store page to load, there was only 4-5 million users on Steam. Doesn't seem like that many, about the same as any other day at this time of the day.
 
CEpeep said:
What did you guys get from the gift? Anyone get one of these "golden coupons" that can be used during the sale?
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I keep going to my inventory and it says I have 0 items, when the tab above says I have 1 (the gift). I can't even open it... They are getting hammered...
 
Got a 50% coupon good for Valve titles only, nice but I have almost all their games lol
 
Orcs must die and Metro2033 are good buys today. But I already have them.
 
TIWizard said:
You have to go to the great gift pile page and click on the thing that says you get a gift. If you can even get there right now...
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Exactly. I did above and got it in my inventory but now their servers are getting hammered and I couldn't use it even if I wanted to.
 
techie81 said:
Exactly. I did above and got it in my inventory but now their servers are getting hammered and I couldn't use it even if I wanted to.
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The coupon I got explicitly said that it was only valid starting from 2012, so you can only use it after the Winter Sale.
 
AmberClad said:
The coupon I got explicitly said that it was only valid starting from 2012, so you can only use it after the Winter Sale.
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Well, if I could actually read the coupon maybe I would know that. Still cannot access anything.
 
Does anybody else find Steam as unusable today as eBay was during the Touchpad sales...I've tried buying a few games a few times and it keeps erroring out.
 
Folks:
I am absolutely new to gaming. I spent some time playing Dirt3 and Bastion.

I noticed that most of the games involve shooting or killing something or the other. Even even in Civilization there seems to be a lot of battles going on.

Is it the norm that apart from the sim type of games (like car, aeroplanes), most RPG games too involve acts which are typically "illegal" in civil society. I know crashing your car a 100 times because you take that 30 mph turn at 90 is also illegal but it does not involve first person violence.
 
aviat72 said:
Folks:
I am absolutely new to gaming. I spent some time playing Dirt3 and Bastion.

I noticed that most of the games involve shooting or killing something or the other. Even even in Civilization there seems to be a lot of battles going on.

Is it the norm that apart from the sim type of games (like car, aeroplanes), most RPG games too involve acts which are typically "illegal" in civil society. I know crashing your car a 100 times because you take that 30 mph turn at 90 is also illegal but it does not involve first person violence.
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Yes.

Of course, there is always Viva Pinata.
 
those baffoons at Valve had all year to prepare for this moment
 
aviat72 said:
Folks:
I am absolutely new to gaming. I spent some time playing Dirt3 and Bastion.

I noticed that most of the games involve shooting or killing something or the other. Even even in Civilization there seems to be a lot of battles going on.

Is it the norm that apart from the sim type of games (like car, aeroplanes), most RPG games too involve acts which are typically "illegal" in civil society. I know crashing your car a 100 times because you take that 30 mph turn at 90 is also illegal but it does not involve first person violence.
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Are you bothered by that? The reason deadly violence in games is popular is because it's usually illegal. Why would I want to play a video game about paintball, for example, when I can go out and play paintball for real.

That said, there are genres where killing isn't as prevalent (adventure games, puzzlers, sports).
 
aviat72 said:
Folks:
I am absolutely new to gaming. I spent some time playing Dirt3 and Bastion.

I noticed that most of the games involve shooting or killing something or the other. Even even in Civilization there seems to be a lot of battles going on.

Is it the norm that apart from the sim type of games (like car, aeroplanes), most RPG games too involve acts which are typically "illegal" in civil society. I know crashing your car a 100 times because you take that 30 mph turn at 90 is also illegal but it does not involve first person violence.
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I guess you do not watch very many movies or even cartoons for that matter...
 
AmberClad said:
Are you bothered by that? The reason deadly violence in games is popular is because it's usually illegal. Why would I want to play a video game about paintball, for example, when I can go out and play paintball for real.

That said, there are genres where killing isn't as prevalent (adventure games, puzzlers, sports).
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I dunno man, killing that companion cube in Portal was a pretty violent murderous unprovoked hate crime.
 
Says I have a gift but then when I click says I don't. Wow their servers are getting hammered... took me 4 tries to even get this far.
 
cannondale06 said:
it gets worse with each sale. it used to be the first few minutes of a sale would be jacked up and now we are dealing with well over an hour. poor Valve does not make enough money to have more servers...
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I think what is going on is you are just seeing the growing popularity of steam. They claimed skyrim was the fastest selling game of all time and cleared 15 million. The number of people steam now deals with is exponentially bigger and more demanding than the early days of counter strike, DOD and TFC. When a deal goes live for any store or website the internet can bring it down fast. I think they should be better prepared but then again no one is, not even newegg on black friday.
 
rudy said:
I think what is going on is you are just seeing the growing popularity of steam. They claimed skyrim was the fastest selling game of all time and cleared 15 million. The number of people steam now deals with is exponentially bigger and more demanding than the early days of counter strike, DOD and TFC. When a deal goes live for any store or website the internet can bring it down fast. I think they should be better prepared but then again no one is, not even newegg on black friday.
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15 million sold for PC version? Did a Valve rep say this, or a Besthesda rep?

Also, I'm experiencing all of the problems mentioned so far in this thread.
 
aviat72 said:
Folks:
I am absolutely new to gaming. I spent some time playing Dirt3 and Bastion.

I noticed that most of the games involve shooting or killing something or the other. Even even in Civilization there seems to be a lot of battles going on.

Is it the norm that apart from the sim type of games (like car, aeroplanes), most RPG games too involve acts which are typically "illegal" in civil society. I know crashing your car a 100 times because you take that 30 mph turn at 90 is also illegal but it does not involve first person violence.
Click to expand...

Not sure if you are trolling but assuming you are not... the same could be said for the majority of movies and television. video games as a form of entertainment need to be compelling and interesting to hold peoples interest. And in order to be compelling generally there needs to be some sort of conflict or challenge.

Now let us look at these two concepts separately. Challenge would be anything difficult which one wishes to accomplish. a good example of a challenge might be solving a rubiks cube or running an eight minute mile; and there are indeed many "video games" that use challenges as a means to provide the necessary compelling element to make them entertaining. For example Angry birds or bejewled. although we refer to these as video games, a game by definition requires competition between two or more parties, an element which these "games" lack. As such they would more accurately be described as video puzzles and indeed the vast majority of them are non violent.

In comparison true Video games as stated previously employ competition or conflict between multiple parties as the principle device through which they provide compelling entertainment; and the reality is that in most cases the easiest (and from a narrative perspective most likely) way to express this notion of conflict if through violence. And if you look at other non video games that people play you will see that the same is true. Many sports such as rugby, American Football, and water polo are extremely violent and many board games such as chess and checkers involve the symbolic representation of violence.

When you really look at it video games are no different than most other games that we play or indeed most other forms of entertainment that we indulge in in regards to their use of violence to provide entertainment. although one could I suppose argue that video games in some ways offer a higher level of viscerality and interaction than some of the above examples that is as best simply a difference in degree but not in fundamental nature.
 
rudy said:
I think what is going on is you are just seeing the growing popularity of steam. They claimed skyrim was the fastest selling game of all time and cleared 15 million. The number of people steam now deals with is exponentially bigger and more demanding than the early days of counter strike, DOD and TFC. When a deal goes live for any store or website the internet can bring it down fast. I think they should be better prepared but then again no one is, not even newegg on black friday.
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Then think about Amazon. One of the largest (or largest, not sure) online retailers. During the holidays, they are going through a 24/7 DDOS, and I've never seen their site down, or even slow. Ever.

Steam should be doing something similar-- increase capacity when needed (holidays/major game releases), decrease it as needed during the year.
 
Btw, who are the characters in the top banner. I only recognize Wheatley, Max, and the Steam mascots. Who are the other two?
 
wasteomind said:
I dunno man, killing that companion cube in Portal was a pretty violent murderous unprovoked hate crime.
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UNPROVOKED MY ASS!! I couldn't be happier killing him unless he had a twin to kill right after...
 
1309753394363793.png
 
anyone else having MASSIVE issues with STEAM

I am trying to buy Portal 2 at $7.49 or 99, whatever the price is, either way, it comes up as $14.99 in cart

METRO 2033 is coming up as the entire THQ pack on me

prices are double what they say they are in my cart.
 
FrEaKy said:
anyone else having MASSIVE issues with STEAM

I am trying to buy Portal 2 at $7.49 or 99, whatever the price is, either way, it comes up as $14.99 in cart

METRO 2033 is coming up as the entire THQ pack on me

prices are double what they say they are in my cart.
Click to expand...
IDK but they are having massive server issues. I keep getting connection errors
 
FrEaKy said:
anyone else having MASSIVE issues with STEAM

I am trying to buy Portal 2 at $7.49 or 99, whatever the price is, either way, it comes up as $14.99 in cart

METRO 2033 is coming up as the entire THQ pack on me

prices are double what they say they are in my cart.
Click to expand...

I did have trouble with Metro doing that to me once or twice. In addition to my cart disappearing on me multiple times. Ended up just going through the steam store on my browser, which was relatively pain free minus one or two hiccups.

Still waiting on my gift for reading about the gift pile, and the gift for checking my inventory to show up in the inventory. :p
 
FrEaKy said:
anyone else having MASSIVE issues with STEAM

I am trying to buy Portal 2 at $7.49 or 99, whatever the price is, either way, it comes up as $14.99 in cart

METRO 2033 is coming up as the entire THQ pack on me

prices are double what they say they are in my cart.
Click to expand...

Yes. I have decided to wait. I had things in my cart showing the right price until it was time to verify payment then they went back to non-sale prices. Good thing I don't have my CC info saved in there or I might have checked out without noticing. I figure it should be back to normal by the time I get home from work.
 
man Steam is getting raped so bad I can't even check what I'm suppose to do on some of the games to earn the prices :p
 
Im actually getting erorrs loading the main page now, 503 errors and sometimes service unreachable at all. So Steam is taking a dump with all the peeps checking out the sales.
 
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